How to Setup a Profitable Giveaway That Generates 27x ROI

Pick the right prize to double your audience

When picking a grand prize, we wanted to make sure it resonated with Little Secrets’ ideal customer.

Everyone loves iPads, or Amazon gift cards… but those products don’t have anything to do with Little Secrets’ business of all natural fair-trade chocolate.

A generic prize would attract low-quality leads. So instead, we wanted to do an eye-catching prize that fit the Little Secrets brand, attracted the right customers… and got tons of attention.

We decided to make our grand prize an entire store display with 60 bags of Little Secrets candy.

Imagine setting that up in your house!

This grand prize only cost $125. This is less than most businesses spend on Facebook advertising in one week!

A common misconception about giveaways is the prize has to be expensive. Instead, it’s more valuable to focus on a prize that attracts your ideal customer. For Little Secrets, we wanted to focus on a simple prize that got the right kind of attention.

How to 3x your giveaway page conversion rate

To make sure visitors knew they had landed in the right place, we created a headline that we could repeat in all of the giveaway promotions.

Our headline formula = prize + time period.

“Win X during Y”

For our Little Secrets giveaway, here’s how we broke down the formula:

X = 60 bags of Little Secrets Candy

Y = Easter, which was 2 weeks away

So the final headline was: “Win 60 Bags of Little Secrets Candies for Easter”

This headline was designed to entice readers to click to learn more about the giveaway. It’s easy to get distracted online, so we wanted a headline that stood out.

Once users were on the giveaway page, we needed to sell them on why they should enter.

To make the page convert, here’s the body copy formula we followed:

Hook – Short and compelling sentence fragment that’s easy to read

Why – Reason why this giveaway is relevant to them personally

Desire – Paint a positive picture of them winning the contest

Action – Tell them exactly what to do with no ambiguity

And here’s what the KingSumo giveaway page looked like when finished:

KingSumo provides a great FAQ and videos if you need help setting up your giveaway.

Remember that users are distracted when reading your giveaway page — with social media, YouTube, kittens, and other giveaways — so you have to grab their attention.

Think like a user, and ask yourself: Why should I care about signing up for this giveaway right now?

Write copy with your ideal user’s experience in mind.

Key strategies to leverage social media for maximum results

Little Secrets uses Facebook as its social media channel of choice.

To leverage their existing Facebook audience, we focused on making it easy for contestants to share the giveaway on Facebook.

We could have focused on trying to grow the Little Secrets Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube followings as well — but asking people to do too many things leads to analysis paralysis, and they’ll end up doing nothing.

Through experimentation, we’ve found that focusing on one social media channel maximizes the final results.

To maximize the giveaway’s exposure on Facebook, we used KingSumo’s built-in “Sharing Options” and “Extra Entry Actions.”

The Sharing Options allow contestants to share the giveaway on Facebook with one click.

Seriously, one click leads to tons of free promotion on Facebook!

And the Extra Entry Actions gives contestants an additional giveaway entry for following Little Secrets on Facebook. To enable this additional entry, we added Facebook as a “social media follow” action.

This feature took 30 seconds to set up, and resulted in an additional 161 Facebook followers over the course of the giveaway!

Here’s an example of what these options looked like on the giveaway page after someone had entered.

The hidden power of referrals: Our secret to making EVERYONE a winner

In giveaways, there’s usually only one winner.

This can be defeating for would-be entrants.

People come to your giveaway page, think they have no chance, and decide not to even bother entering.

They exit the giveaway… and cost your business another lead and potential customer.

To increase our number of entrants, we testedoffering guaranteed prizes to people that referred others to the giveaway.

Here’s what we offered:

If you referred 1 person = Coupon for 15% off your next full order of Little Secrets candy

3 referrals = Bag of candy donated in your name to The Women’s and Children’s Shelter

5 referrals = Coupon for 32% off your next full order of Little Secrets candy

There are multiple subreddits on reddit that are dedicated to giveaways and sweepstakes.

Most people avoid these subreddits because they think they will only result in terrible leads.

But we thought about reddit differently.

It takes 5 minutes to post on reddit, so if we generated at least one customer from reddit, we would make about $25 in revenue or $300 per hour worked (not too shabby).

For the experiment, we posted the giveaway on the subreddit r/giveaways to reach the largest number of potential new customers.

To attract the right kind of people, we crafted a specific headline that:

Shared the unique benefits of Little Secrets candies

Only attracted people who were interested in all-natural, fair trade chocolate

Stuck close to the original headline we used for our giveaway and email

It was also important for us to get upvotes to our reddit post. This would help it stay on the r/giveaways homepage longer.

Plus, the more a post is upvoted, the more reddit’s algorithm features it across their site. Free advertising!

To get more upvotes, we had all our team members sign up for accounts and upvote. Then, we texted the link to a few friends, too.

Social media: Our exact step-by-step system to make your giveaway viral

Before we promoted our giveaway on social media, our three major marketing channels were generating a steady number of entrants:

Popups were converting new and returning site visitors into entrants

Our email was turning our biggest fans and readers into entrants

Reddit’s r/giveaways subreddit helped get new entrants in the door

Social media would give us the chance to turn even more fans and followers into entrants. Some followers were already on the email list, but a good number of them were not. Also, not everyone is going to open the announcement email, so it always pays to communicate on multiple channels.

We decided to start our social media push by leveraging Facebook — the biggest social media platform for Little Secrets to get the most eyeballs.

Similar to the email, we positioned Little Secrets as a way to remove artificial flavors from your family’s Easter celebration.

Here’s how we set up our ultimate Facebook post:

We kept the copy short, so people who scan their Newsfeed could catch it at a glance

We used a bright visual image to catch their attention — and used Easter colors to tie in the holiday theme of the giveaway

We linked directly to the giveaway page on the Little Secrets website

The post started to spread:

Total comments = 5

Total Likes = 43

Shares = 3

We didn’t spend any money to promote this post, so this was all organic engagement.

A nice surprise was that followers grew 4% over 7 days. It wasn’t our primary goal to grow the Little Secrets Facebook fan page, but it was a nice bonus.

Deadline strategies: Last-minute tips to convert more customers

Every day of the giveaway, Little Secrets was getting between 25 to 250 new email subscribers.

However, not all of the entrants were confirming their email address and entry into the giveaway.

And because they didn’t confirm their entry, they weren’t going to see the confirmation email with instruction on how to refer their friends and win guaranteed prizes.

In our experience, the last day of any promotion generates 40% or more of the results when you send a deadline reminder email.

To make sure Little Secrets did not miss out on a ton of additional leads, we needed to send two different reminders.

To accomplish this we separated our entrants into two groups:

Entrants who had not confirmed their entry

Entrants who had confirmed their entry (and were already pushed to our email provider)

To separate, we exported all giveaway entrants in our KingSumo backend dashboard:

Once we had the CSV of the contestants, we used Microsoft Excel to sort them by confirmed or unconfirmed status.

We used the sort function under the Data menu in Excel.

We imported the unconfirmed entrants into our email provider and tagged them as “unconfirmed.”

For unconfirmed entrants, and existing subscribers who had not entered the contest, we resent the original announcement email with two adjustments:

Subject line. We added a same-day deadline of 7 pm to get entrants to take action fast

Body copy. We reiterated the deadline to further convince entrants to confirm their entry

In the body, we also used compelling copy to help unconfirmed entrants visualize what it would be like to win the main prize.

Also, in the PS, we teased the secondary benefit of confirming your entry for additional guaranteed prizes.

Notice the multiple deadlines we added to the email.

This email was sent to existing subscribers who had not entered the giveaway, and unconfirmed entrants… but we still managed to get a 38.3% open rate and 9.3% click rate!

That’s 2.5x normal email averages. Great for a “cold” group of users who didn’t enter the giveaway the first time!

And we didn’t stop there.

We also sent another email reminder to all the confirmed giveaway entrants.

This email was designed to generate more guaranteed prizes for the entrants and more referrals for Little Secrets.

Here’s the email we sent to the confirmed entrants list:

Like the unconfirmed email, this email also performed VERY well:

51.9% open rate

7.3% click rate

In total, these two emails DOUBLED the number of entrants, and new subscribers, to the Little Secrets email list.

Seriously. Just two simple deadline emails to a group of unconfirmed and confirmed users 2x’d the entrants.

The 3-step strategy to make everyone a happy winner

No one likes to find out they lost a giveaway. We made sure everyone who participated was a winner at the end of the giveaway.

To make everyone a winner, we started by creating 5 segments:

Contestants who referred 0 people

Contestants who referred 1 person

Contestants who referred 3 people

Contestants who referred 5 people

Contestants who referred 10 people

After the giveaway was over we exported a new CSV and sorted contestants by how many entries they received.

Our most successful contestant referred 41 people!

Because everyone who refers a friend gets 3 additional bonus entries, the guaranteed prizes started at 4 entries (1 entry for entering themselves, 3 for referring a friend).

Here’s how all the segments broke down:

1-3 entries = No guaranteed prizes

4+ entries = Coupon for 15% off your next full order of Little Secrets candy

10+ entries = Bag of candy donated in your name to The Women’s and Children’s Shelter

16+ entries = Coupon for 32% off your next full order of Little Secrets candy

31+ entries = Secret swag box full of Little Secrets candy and swag

After sorting entrants in Excel, we uploaded each group into the email provider and tagged them with the appropriate prize level.

The total number of entrants Little Secrets had for each prize:

4+ Entries = 53 contestants

10+ Entries = 13 contestants

16+ Entries = 4 contestants

31+ Entries = 11 contestants

We allowed entrants to stack their referral prizes. In other words, if someone referred 10 people they got all the prize levels. Sweet bonus!

Here’s the email we sent to entrants who referred 10 people:

The end result?

An 80% open rate and a 14.3% click rate average for the guaranteed prize emails.

This click rate is even better when you consider that two of the four prizes required someone to buy Little Secrets in order to get a discount. That’s free revenue for Little Secrets.

How to transition from giveaway contestants to life-long customers

Many giveaway creators will drop giveaway entrants into the middle of their email sequence.

Think about how confusing this is for the entrant: These people are new to your brand, and you’re treating them like you’ve known them for a while.

It makes your emails feel weird and transactional.

After the giveaway was over, Little Secrets had two new segments:

New subscribers who joined the list because of the giveaway

Existing subscribers who entered the giveaway

We wanted to make it easy for new subscribers to understand the Little Secrets brand, so we crafted a special post-giveaway email for them.

We broke down the email into three parts:

Part 1: The email welcomed entrants to the Little Secrets email list, and told them how the giveaway helped donate chocolate to people in need. This was the “feel good” hook to keep reading.

Part 2: We talked about where else new entrants could find Little Secrets on the web. This helped people learn about the brand… and it also helped grow their social following.

Part 3: We invited entrants to say on the Little Secrets Society (the email list) — and enticed them by mentioning the BIG Easter sale.

You can see all three parts in the email that was sent to new subscribers:

The results were a 57% open rate and a 8.1% click rate.

Every click went to high-intent pages for Little Secrets: the Twitter page, Facebook fan page, and store.

For existing email subscribers who entered, we sent a different email.

We segmented the Little Secrets list by looking at the following parameters:

Everyone who entered the giveaway AND their subscription date was before the start of the giveaway.

We sent a similar email as the new subscribers, but removed the section that explained the secret membership since they were already subscribers.

We got an 84% open rate and 4.2% click rate on this email. This meant more Facebook and twitter followers for Little Secrets. Nice!

This 84% open rate was the highest of the giveaway, and there are two reasons why:

All these people entered the giveaway, so this was an active list

The subject line enticed people to see if they won the grand prize

These open rates are proof that maintaining an engaged list is crucial — and if you do it right, then your open rates, click rates, and sales will continue to increase.

Effective tips for making a healthy profit at the end of your giveaway

The week after the giveaway ended, we sent a 24% off promotion to everyone on the Little Secrets email list.

This email was designed to do one thing…

Convert subscribers into buyers.

From the giveaway, we had increased the Little Secrets email list by 56%.

We purposely planned the sale immediately after the giveaway so the new subscribers had an opportunity to buy before they forgot all about Little Secrets.

You don’t need a seven-part launch sequence to sell your product. Instead, just make an offer ASAP while your new subscribers are still engaged.

Here’s the sale email we sent to all subscribers announcing the sale:

The email got a 38.7% open rate and 7.2% click rate.

All these clicks went to the Little Secrets product page on Amazon, and many of them converted into new and repeat customers.

Two days after the first sale email was sent, we sent a second email to anyone who did not open the first email. Here’s the copy:

This email got an 11.7% open rate and 0.5% click rate.

It was lower than the other emails, but we were still happy with the results. It was a less engaged segment that didn’t open the previous email.

The final giveaway numbers and results (use this as inspiration!)

The giveaway was a massive success for Little Secrets.

Not only for growing the Little Secrets email list, but also for converting new subscribers into customers at a profit!

If we would have spent the same amount of money on Facebook advertising or SEO, the costs would have been much higher.

Here are the final numbers:

Starting list size: 1,132

New subscribers: 634

List growth: 56%

Number of entrants: 1,016

Cost of the giveaway: $160 for KingSumo + $300 prizes = ($460)

Sales from Easter promotion the following week: 50

Revenue from Easter promotion = $1,044.02

Net revenue from giveaway + follow-up Easter promotion = $777.29

The giveaway increased Little Secrets list by 56% with 634 new subs, and Little Secrets netted $777.29 after the cost of KingSumo and prizes! 🎉🚀

Another way of looking at the giveaway is…

Little Secrets made $1.23 for every new email subscriber they collected during the giveaway.

And based on past performance, we know that each email address added to the Little Secrets email list is worth $20 a year. This means over the next 12 months, entrants from this giveaway will add an estimated $12,680 in sales!

Because of the booming success of this giveaway, Little Secrets plans on running multiple giveaways a year.

It’s easier than you think to run your own giveaway.

Thanks to KingSumo handling all of the technical hurdles, running a profitable giveaway is now easier than ever.

And combined with the strategy outlined above, we’re confident you can turn your giveaway into a profit machine too!

If you have any questions about running a profitable, successful giveaway…

I’ll personally be answering every single question in the comments for the next seven days. If you have any questions or comments, please click here to leave a comment and I’ll reply.

Today, we’re going to show you how to turn giveaway entrants into customers. 💰

Last year, we ran a giveaway for 9 of our favorite travel items.

The morning before the giveaway ended, we sent an email to everyone who entered…

And our giveaway partners saw their sales increase!

Here are 5 steps to send your own “entrant to sale” email:

Create a discount code for your product. 🤑 For example, if you’re an author you can offer an Amazon coupon for 50% off your book. Or, if you’re not giving away a physical prize, you can offer a discount on an hour of your consulting time.

Make sure to set an expiration date on your discount. ⏰ Setting a deadline helps people take action fast.

Here are 3 giveaway tips to help take your giveaway to the next level.

Use these tips to get more email subscribers, customers, and social media followers.

Promote using Facebook Ads. 💸Facebook ads can be an inexpensive and effective way to drive entrants to a giveaway. Surfboard company Degree 33 is using Facebook Ads to run monthly giveaways.For the most effective giveaway ads, target Facebook users with interests similar to your brand.

For example, if you’re a surfboard company you can target people located in California who like the pro surfer Kelly Slater.

After you set up your budgeting and target, create a benefit-driven ad to appeal to your target audience.

Here’s an example from Degree 33:

And if you want to create retargeting ads for both people who do and don’t enter your giveaway…

Do a partner giveaway. 👨Additional partners can help you massively grow your giveaway. SaaS business MeetEdgar got 2,000+ entrants by featuring 3 partners.Use BuzzSumo, LinkedIn, or Google to find complementary products. Then, use Hunter to find email addresses for the products and companies you found.

Many companies will be receptive to giving you a free product if you feature them in your giveaway social media posts and emails.

Here’s a sample email you can send:

Hi [name],

I LOVE [product]. Use it all the time, my favorite thing is [your favorite thing about their product].

Quick question…

I’m running a giveaway for my readers. Gonna promote to [# of followers you have] on my social and email channels.

You’re looking for an alternative to Gleam for running giveaways — something cheaper or free, with better features.

Today, we’re going to talk about Gleam alternative KingSumo.

A recent giveaway host used KingSumo viral giveaways to get 300 new social followers in just 9 days. 🚀

That’s a 775% increase over their normal growth!

In this post, we’re comparing Gleam and KingSumo side-by-side so you can make the best choice for your business, brand, and website.

Starting Your Giveaway

You can start your giveaway with KingSumo in under 5 minutes.

Just type in your email address and start setting up for FREE.

Gleam’s sign up process takes a few extra steps.

During Gleam’s signup they also lock key giveaway features behind a paywall:

Adding prize photos/images

Daily entries

Customized links for bonus entries

Floating widget tab

Promotional email templates

LinkedIn integration

Email list integration

Refer-a-friend entry option

KingSumo offers many of these same features for FREE. 💰

When setting up your giveaway, KingSumo makes it super easy:

You can boost your giveaway with a show-stopping headline and description. This helps your audience easily enter and share so you get more customers, email subscribers, and fans

Set your start and end date to ANY duration you want. Want to start a giveaway today? No problem. Or, start it a month from now… whatever you want!

Add your site name and URL. This make it super easy for your contestants to visit your site and fall in love with your brand

Add gorgeous images to your giveaways to catch people’s attention them and get them to enter

On Gleam, adding prize photos to your giveaway is only reserved for paid users.

After you add giveaway information when setting up KingSumo, you can pick your Sharing options.

These sharing options allows an entrant to one-click share the giveaway with their friends on a handful of social networks.

It benefits the entrant because it increases their chances to win.

And it benefits the giveaway admin because it helps the giveaway go viral and the admin to get more social followers. Win-win.

Some giveaways using KingSumo have grown 2,000+ social followers because of this feature!

Gleam has tons options to get extra points too by visiting a Facebook fan page, following a Twitter page, and more, too.

Some are free, but when you look closer many are paid only.

Where Gleam stops, KingSumo keeps on going.

In the Bonus Entriessection, KingSumo gives creators tons of freedom to create actions that help grow their business, website, or social following via a giveaway.

Here’s where KingSumo keeps adding value…

Watch a YouTube video (only for paid Gleam users). Imagine having hundreds of people watch your best content on YouTube, subscribe to your channel, and helping make your YouTube channel more popular!

Click a Link / Custom action (reserved for paid Gleam users). Can’t find the bonus entry out-of-box option you want? This feature gives you the freedom to create your own! Want your entrants to comment on your latest blog post? Follow you on Snapchat? Something else? It all can be done on KingSumo for FREE

Podcast subscribers (missing from Gleam). Grow your podcast and retain a listener base you can market to again and again in the future

These extra bonus entries are how you grow your social channels, podcasts, and more with little effort. 🚀

Launching & Promoting Your Giveaway

After putting your finishing touches on your giveaway, it’s time to launch and make it go viral.

On Gleam, after you save your info and you’re ready to launch, you have a few options to promote the giveaway.

Embed your giveaway on any page or post. A standard for all giveaway tools so you can can show your giveaway on your website.

Create a landing page. Mirror the Gleam hosted landing page on your site

Install a competition tab on your Facebook page. Make it easy for your fans to notice your giveaway on your Facebook fan page

Add a tab to your site. Have a tab on your website that triggers your giveaway in a pop-up when clicked. The tab feature is only for paid users.

On KingSumo, after setup, you’ll get an actionable step-by-step marketing checklist to launch your giveaway successfully.

Like Gleam, You can start by embedding your giveaway widget on any page of your website. You can use this to build KingSumo around your brand.

For example, put text, images, or videos surrounding your giveaway. Or, use a Sumo popup or Smart Bar to give special offers to giveaway entrants.

Next, you can embed a widget tab on your website completely FREE!

You can embed the badge on any (or all) your page and it floats. Your website visitors won’t miss it.

If you want to launch and promote your giveaway to virality, with beautiful photo gallery embeds and FREE embed tabs, then KingSumo is the right choice for you.

After the Giveaway is Over

KingSumo has one more feature to get you more subscribers & followers… after the giveaway ends.

And that feature is the KingSumo post-giveaway entrant page.

Instead of showing customers a dead end when your giveaway is over, this feature helps you get more subscribers and followers after you wrap up — automatically without any extra work.

This means you can leave the giveaway on your website, knowing it’s acting as a lead-generation magnet to get more email subscribers, potential customers, and lifelong fans.

Gleam doesn’t have a post-giveaway entries page — if you want to continue collecting email subscribers even after a giveaway ends, KingSumo is the best choice.

In Short: KingSumo vs. Gleam

For features you could get from KingSumo for FREE, Gleam charges you up to $4,788 per year!

If you want a FREE Gleam alternative that’s simple to set up, packed with premium features, and ready out-of-the-gate to grow your revenue, social followers, and email list… check out KingSumo.

Using viral giveaways, you can set up bonus entries to push people to follow your social channels.

For example…

If you want someone to like your Facebook page, you can give them a bonus entry

If you want a new Instagram follower, give another bonus entry

If you’re trying to get more Twitter followers, give a third bonus entry

With bonus entries, you’re getting HIGHLY engaged social followers:

It gives your entrants more entries to your giveaway, which increase their chance of winning

It gets entrants to take ACTION on the things you want — like following you on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and elsewhere. More social followers! Sometimes, we all need a little push. Help people fall in love with your brand and content!

Bonus entries are how you grow your major social channels quickly with little effort. 🚀

And it doesn’t stop with giving points for only when people follow you on social media…

You can also give bonus entrants when people share your giveaway on social channels.

If people tweet out your giveaway, they get a bonus entry.

If people post on Instagram, they get a bonus entry.

The more people who share your giveaway, the more people who see the giveaway… and the more social followers you can get.

Next, to take social sharing up a notch, we need to create a compelling message with some killer hashtags to make your giveaway explode.

Step 2: Focus on Epic Hashtags to Make Your Content Viral on Social

Picture this…

Person A shares your giveaway on social media by pasting a plain link of your giveaway.

And when it’s compelling enough, it’ll get tons of viral attention… without any work from your side!

If you want to create a custom share link for Twitter, and add more flame to your Twitter share bonfire, start by finding effective hashtags to create a GREAT tweet that works for you.

Here’s one strategy you can use to find popular hashtags…

Go to Hashtagify.me and search for terms related to your giveaway. You’ll find the most popular hashtags, plus a word cloud of related hashtags.

Take a few of the bigger hashtags and run them through Hashtags.org to measure their popularity. You want every hashtag you use to be guaranteed traffic magnets, so we recommend only using hashtags that get 100+ tweets per hour.

Set up your customer URL in your giveaway as the share message to get bonus entries. This guarantees a successful message.

Every time people share your custom message on social media… each post will get viral attention from users searching for those popular hashtags.

And because your copy is compelling, it’ll get people to click your giveaway, enter… and then follow you on social media using the bonus entries you already set up in step 1!

Now that you’ve primed your viral machine, it’s time to send out that first killer email to get even more of your friends sharing.

Step 3: Send Your First Email

If you want more social followers from your giveaway, you need more people seeing it.

One of the best ways to get more attention to a giveaway is through email.

You don’t need a big email list. You don’t need to be super popular (no Homecoming King here). You don’t need to be a professional email marketer.

Even if you send to only a few dozen friends, your first email will send tidal waves and kickstart the initial traction for your giveaway.

Here are 3 places you can get people to send your email:

Look through your Google contacts. Check your recent sent emails. Who are you contacting the most? Think specifically about friends and family.

Look at your LinkedIn connections. You can pull email addresses from LinkedIn. Look for people who have jobs or interests related to your giveaway item. Even if you don’t know the person very well, sending an email is worth it.

Get influencers to email for you! Find people you admire or follow online. Email them and ask if they’ll help email your giveaway to their fans. In return, you can mention them in your giveaway, in your emails, or on your social channels.

When we talk about running viral giveaways, one of the most common questions is…

“Do giveaways actually work?”

For many people, giveaways are a new and different marketing tactic.

Everyone knows about SEO, online advertising, and social media.

Those marketing channels are familiar… while giveaways are a hidden marketing gem most people don’t know about. 💎

Here are just a few examples of how giveaways can lead to insane results for you:

30% of AppSumo’s revenue for years came from giveaways. This is how AppSumo bootstrapped their business to an 8-figure company. Giveaways were the best ROI in all of the early AppSumo marketing strategies.

When you’re launching a new product, giveaways can help you get new customers: Ryan Holiday ran a giveaway last month and got 6,144 subs in two weeks.

Misconception #1: Giveaways result in bad subscribers

Picking the right prize

Any marketing channel can lead to bad subscribers or customers if you set up the wrong targeting.

Just like targeting your Facebook Ads or Google SEO keyword strategy correctly, targeting is important with giveaways too.

To make an uber-successful giveaway, choose a narrow product your IDEAL customer wants.

For example:

Noah Kagan’s audience is interested in travel and entrepreneurship, so he created an Ultimate Traveler giveaway that generated 23,127 entries.

Ryan Holiday ran a book giveaway for 10 copies of his signed book. This generated 6,145 entries — that’s 6,145 people Ryan can also sell to in the future…

A California surf company is running a giveaway for a new surfboard and accessories. All entrants in this giveaway are super targeted for their niche audience.

Focus your giveaway on your niche or target market — like Facebook ads, when your targeting is too broad, you get bad results.

For example, if you give away an Amazon gift card or iPad, that may be too broad.

But when you focus specifically on what your audience might WANT or NEED, you can build a list of perfect subscribers for your business and drive incredible ROI from giveaways.

Keeping a healthy mailing list

Some people think giveaways “destroy” email lists.

Not true.

When you use proper email list cleaning techniques, your reputation won’t be damaged at all.

The team at AppSumo has grown an 8-figure business from giveaways. And so has Sumo.

Here are 3 strategies to keep your list clean:

ONLY add confirmed entries. Many giveaway tools will tell you if a user is a confirmed entry or not. To confirm an entry, the entrant needs to click the confirmation link in the giveaway confirmation email. In many giveaway backends, you can easily delete anyone who isn’t confirmed — and only add the people who are confirmed.For example, here’s the people we would keep vs. delete from a recent KingSumo giveaway…

Enable double opt-in. With every email service provider (like MailChimp), you can enable double opt-in. Similar to a giveaway confirmation email, the double opt-in email from your email service provider is an extra measure to make sure people want your emails.If you set up double opt-in and they don’t click to confirm their email address with your email service provider, they’re not added to your list

Clean inactives. To make sure your email list is super clean and your deliverability never suffers, we recommend removing anyone who hasn’t opened or clicked an email in six months. After six months, old inactive emails can become spam traps. Keep your list clean!

Misconception #2: You need a huge audience to have a successful giveaway

It can be easy to see some of the big names using KingSumo and think, “it’s easy for Noah or Ryan Holiday because they have a big audience.”

It helps… but you can still run an ultra-successful giveaway with a small audience.

For example, a small notebook manufacturer you probably never heard of called imStone ran a giveaway that got 3,370 entrants (aka new email subscribers)!

If you want to run a giveaway but don’t have a big audience, here are 3 FREE things you can do to get entries right now:

Start by using KingSumo. KingSumo is our free giveaway tool that enables you to create and promote your giveaway. Once you have your prizes in place, KingSumo will help you get your giveaway up and running in minutes.

Share your giveaway across social media platforms. Your own followers are low-hanging fruit for your giveaways. Share your giveaway with your existing audiences on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.Once you’ve shared it with your own audiences, try looking for some additional places to promote your giveaway. For example, Sam Jeffries shared his giveaway in a few Facebook Groups focused on his core audience.

It’s also worth scanning Reddit and submitting your giveaway on a subreddit like /r/giveaways (or another subreddit that has a lot of your audience)

Collaborate with people you admire to give away a package prize — and cross-promote. If you’re running a giveaway with no existing audience, ask other people to give you their products for free if you promise to link them in the giveaway and mention them on social

Many times, this is all they need to help promote your giveaway to their audience!

A recent KingSumo was able to launch a successful giveaway using this tip… and got in front of thousands of new people because of it.